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Why Climate Change Is A Burning Issue

The Saddleworth Moor wildfires of last week prove we ignore climate change - the one thing nobody mentioned as a contributing factor - at our peril, warns Miles King.

In this - the most glorious hot, dry summer we’ve been enjoying in the UK - it might be timely to recall that 10 years ago, we saw the most significant piece of environmental law enacted in the UK for many years. The Climate Change Act was made law in 2008, led through Parliament by the former Labour leader Ed Miliband, when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Yes, back then we had a Cabinet minister tasked with leading action on Climate Change. How things change.

The Act required that administration and all subsequent Governments to take the necessary actions to achieve an 80% reduction in climate change emissions, from 1990 levels, by 2050.

Ten years later, the Committee on Climate Change - that lean but effective organisation created to keep the Government’s feet to the fire on climate action - is not happy. It has just released a report warning the Government that is it falling behind in its actions. Although overall emissions are down 43% since 1990, the Committee, chaired by former Conservative Environment Secretary John Gummer (now Lord Deben) notes that actions have stalled, especially over the last five years. Perhaps this is not so surprising, given his successors included Owen Paterson, who was not convinced climate change was even happening, or - if it was, it wasn’t a problem. Since leaving the Government, Paterson has been involved with a post-Brexit project called Clexit, which aims to get the UK to withdraw from taking action on Climate Change, including revoking the Climate Change Act.

One action the Committee has identified as needing urgent action, is to first identify emissions of greenhouse gases from UK peatlands; and then decide what actions that need to be taken to reduce these emissions.

There is a lot of peatland in the UK - mainly in the form of blanket bog which covers the upland landscapes of all four UK countries. Peat forms our largest Carbon resource - far bigger than carbon stored in forests, for example. Our peatlands need to be protected, otherwise they degrade and, as they slowly decompose, release carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.

Degraded blanket bogs are found across much of our uplands, which have been damaged by centuries of industrial pollution, acid rain, as well as overgrazing and drainage for agriculture. It is, to me, astonishing that we still do not know the extent of greenhouse-gas emissions from UK peatlands, though the Government has committed to completing this analysis by 2022.

Probably the single most effective way of reducing emissions from peatlands is to restore their hydrology, that is the way water flows through the peat. Peat forms when Sphagnum moss (or less often certain grasses and sedges) grows and dies. The dead plant material does not break down (because oxygen is not available), but rather is converted into peat. This peat is then covered by a new layer of plants, and the cycle continues. The peat underneath the live vegetation is protected by its ‘skin’ of plants, and retains water like a sponge. And over centuries, or even millennia, peat can develop to a depth of many metres. But when it is damaged by pollution or agriculture, the vegetation dies. The peat is exposed, starts to dry out and then breaks down, once in contact with air.

A damaged, dried out peatland is vulnerable to fire. And this is exactly what happened on Saddleworth Moor (historically in Yorkshire, but now part of Greater Manchester) last week. It’s not entirely clear what caused the fire to start, though there have been suggestions that it was caused by some trespassers, either deliberately or by accident. Either way, the exceptionally hot and dry weather, and a vast area of damaged dried-out peat, created the ideal conditions for a large moorland fire which, at the time of writing, has already covered around 1000ha of moorland.

What has also been noted is that the area where the fire spread was an area of moorland being “restored” to Grouse Moor. Grouse Moor management involves deliberately setting fire to areas of moorland to encourage the growth of new heather, which Red Grouse, (whose numbers are artificially boosted for shooting), like to feed on. Many thousands of hectares of Moorland are burned for Grouse Moor management every year. In a 2015 report the Climate Change Committee noted “the damaging practice of burning peat to increase Grouse yields continues.”

As the impacts of climate change become more severe in the UK, we can expect to see more hot, dry summers which will make our peatlands ever more vulnerable to fire yet, as the Climate Change Committee notes, we are already lagging behind on our actions to tackle climate change by reducing emissions.

The Saddleworth Moor fire shows that we also urgently need to take action to restore the hydrology of our degraded peatlands, both for their wildlife (and archaeology), their bleak beauty, and because they are our biggest Carbon store.

And we need to ask ourselves whether managing Moorlands intensively to create Grouse for shooting, can possibly be compatible with this? Protecting the Carbon resource must come above every other priority.

Miles King is an Ecologist, founder of People Need Nature and a regular columnist for Lush Times. These are his own views. Follow him on Twitter @Milesking10